In the late 1980s, someone had the bright idea to hire Dan Aykroyd to write and star in a comedy film based on the classic TV cop drama Dragnet. Since Jack Webb wasn't around, they cast Dan Aykroyd as Sgt. Joe Friday's nephew with the same name, and gave him a new sidekick named Pep Streebek, played by Tom Hanks. Yes, that Tom Hanks. The film also featured the original Bill Gannon from the 1960s series, Harry Morgan!

In the film, Captain Bill Gannon puts Sgt. Friday and Pep on the case of an evil cult that goes by the the awesome acronym P.A.G.A.N., which stands for "People Against Goodness And Normalcy". I seriously love that.

Now, to be honest, the film isn't so bad. In fact, it's quite funny. Dan Aykroyd does a pretty great Jack Webb impersonation, and Tom Hanks is just perfectly hilarious. Having the original Bill Gannon from the 60s TV show adds more hilarity, and there are some great supporting parts by Dabney Coleman as a Hugh Hefner-type and Christopher Plummer as a televangelist. It also has a great foul-mouthed cameo by the hilarious 1960s character actress Kathleen Freeman. It's just awesome.

By the way, I subscribe to the belief that Harry Morgan is one of the funniest people in the history of the universe. His voice and his delivery as the comic relief in the 1960s Dragnet have made me laugh harder than some comedians can.

I only have one problem with this film. It's also the problem I have with most films from the mid to late 80s. That problem is -- the use of crappy "rap" music.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Today's grooviness is PART TWO of the three part collection of my Girl in Gold Boots memorabilia. The piece we're going to be looking at today is the original pressbook from the 1968 Ted V. Mikels cult classic!

As you can plainly see, the film was promoted as a BOX-OFFICE BONANZA OF GOLD! Oh, how I love the word "bonanza". I don't know how much money it actually made, but I highly doubt it was a "bonanza". Perhaps it being featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 brought it more fans, DVD sales, and money! At least, I hope it did.

As with all pressbooks, the whole thing is basically just a tiny newspaper that's sole purpose is to explain to you how awesome the movie is, and show you that if you put this film in your theater, you will be rolling around in buckets of gold and rainbows from the mystical land of Figgleforth.

The pressbook also contains what I love the most about B-Movie/Exploitation films -- promotional materials. Possibly my favorite thing about these kind of films are the catchphrases and the taglines they come up with for the posters and advertisements.

"Vibrant...

Unpredictable...

She hungered for fame...

The men in her life offered her

love, danger, excitement!"

Pure genius. If you can resist that, then you are a much stronger person than I.

The pressbook also includes a few biographical articles on each of the main actors in the film -- Leslie McRae, Tom Pace, Jody Daniels, and Mark Herron. As far as I know, the main three characters are all still alive... but, I could be wrong. All I know is that I'd love to meet Jody Daniels, Leslie McRae, or Tom Pace... HINT HINT...

Leslie McRae did a lot of work in the 60s and 70s, with bit parts on lots of TV shows, such as Here's Lucy, Love, American Style, and Green Acres. She also had small parts in The Long Goodbye, the classically campy film Valley of the Dolls, and as Don Rickles' girlfriend in The Money Jungle. She had starring and supporting roles in some other films, like Ted V. Mikels' Blood Orgy of the She-Devils, Bummer, Wonder Women, Coffy, and probably the most popular, Paul Bartel's cult classic Death Race 2000. Her most recent role took place after a 30 YEAR absence from film and TV, in the 2005 docu-drama Day of Miracles -- which she also produced. From what we can tell from her IMDb page, she has been mostly producing projects since 1997, including the 2007 Academy Awards! WOAH. Mind = Blown.

Tom Pace mostly performed in TV, such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Mission: Impossible, and 11 episodes of Combat!. Ted V. Mikels seemed to like him, since he cast him in two of his other films -- Blood Orgy of the She-Devils and Astro-Zombies. He also had a bit part in the classic disaster film Airport, where he plays one of the passengers on the plane who makes concerned faces in the background.

Jody Daniels, being a musician-turned-actor, started out recording for Dot Records, putting out only one 7" single, and unfortunately, no full length LP. The only other movie that he had a starring role is in an extremely rare biker film entitled Hells Chosen Few, which was also released in 1968.He also had bit parts in the films Policewomen, High Yellow, and the TV movie The Eye Creatures.

According to this pressbook, Jody performed a song on an episode of the classic anthology show, Route 66. As a normal crazy person should, I decided to look this up on IMDb to find out and pick up the DVD. Unfortunately for me, IMDb does not list any episodes featuring our pal Jody Daniels. But, that didn't stop me. Since I work part-time at the world's greatest video store, CineFile Video, I decided to rent out a season of Route 66, on the extremely unlikely chance that I would find it.

As soon as I brought it home, I searched online to find the episodes on the DVD that were filmed in Texas, since the show usually cast people from the towns they were filming in. Well, as luck would have it, the first episode I picked was the one! I got about 2/3 of the way through, when a party scene arose. I heard guitar, the camera cut around the party, and there he was -- tight gray suit, clean shaven, slicked back hair, and playing thesame exact guitar he plays in Girl in Gold Boots! Kablam!

Check him out in the scene from the Route 66 second season episode "A Long Piece of Mischief" in the video below! He's rockin' out in the background throughout the whole scene, but at about 0:45, there's a good look at him and that awesome guitar.

Of the four main stars, the one with the most intriguing life story has to be Mark Herron, who played the greasy nightclub owner, Leo McCabe. One thing that the pressbook only briefly mentions is that he had a role in Frederico Fellini's 8 1/2, which is now considered one of the greatest films of all time.

But by far the most interesting thing about Mark Herron is the fact that at the of the making of Girl in Gold Boots, he was married to super duper movie/music star Judy Garland! He was her fourth husband, and their marriage lasted from November 1965 to January 1969. They broke off the marriage when she discovered that he was gay, and apparently having an affair with her daughter Liza Minnelli's boyfriend and later husband.

Oh boy.

Mark and Judy -- professional smilers.

Another page of this pressbook promotes something that was never officially released -- the Girl in Gold Boots Soundtrack. Chris Howard wrote the main theme and other songs for the film, but many of the songs (including the theme) were sung by Larry Cartell. Other tracks were performed by Joe Valino and Jerry Wallace. Jody Daniels even wrote a song for the film!

Now, for gigantic nerdy fans of this film, being able to find all the surprisingly super songs from the movie is like finding the holy grail of B-Movie music. Since the album was never released, it seems almost impossible, unless you're magical like me...

Monday, January 16, 2012

The title Bowl-A-Record kind of explains itself, doesn't it? No? Bah! You people and your expectations of long, convoluted descriptions and paragraphs that lead to nowhere!

Well, you asked for it (not really) and now you're going to get it.

Anyways, today's record is the "supreme, scientific way of harnessing the power of your mind" to get on your way to becoming THE GREATEST BOWLER IN THE UNIVERSE!!

Okay, not really. Maybe the greatest bowler in your apartment building, but not the universe.

Sorry if I got your hopes up.

This record is supposed to teach you how to become a better bowler by using the POWER OF SUGGESTION which apparently, we all have. That's a lame superpower. I want Cheese-Vision™, dang it.

As evidenced by the back cover of this record, the narrator, Professor Richard Carl Spurney (who has a degree in Bowlology) is "one of the world's noted authorities on recorded suggestion. He has served in this capacity as consultant to our armed forces, the medical profession, educational institutions, and large corporations". Huh. Didn't know that. Don't really care, either.

In case you're wondering, the POWER OF SUGGESTION is basically you trying to convince (aka hypnotize) yourself to think that you're a better bowler. Now, maybe that helps you, and that's cool, but I sure as heck don't try to convince myself that I'm a brain surgeon, although that would be fun...

As you listen to the narration on Side Two, you should be convinced that the power of suggestion is a serious thing.

Well, anyways, don't listen to Side Two if you're sleepy, because you might fall asleep and wake up a better bowler and try to bowl a baby out a window or something. People do crazy things when they're hypnotized. Believe me, I've seen enough horror movies to know that these things happen almost every day.

Well, I hope you enjoy Bowl-A-Record. Perhaps one day, with the help of Professor Richard Carl Spurney, you will become a better bowler and win the World's Championship of Bowling, or as I like to call it, The Bowling Bowl.

Fair warning though -- if you do win The Bowling Bowl, I get half the prize money for introducing you to this self-improvement record.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Once again, we come back to the Kenner Give-a-Show slide comics. I'm starting to feel like I don't even need to preface these things anymore. I mean, they are all absolutely horrid, I'm just wasting my time trying to hype these up. Well, here we go...

In the first panel, we see four animals, which I assume to be the titular Cattanooga Cats in some sort of red room with blue floor. The one with the green hat is reading some sort of telegram or letter or secret self-destructing note that indicates that "THEY" want them to play in "THE CITY".

I don't know who "THEY" are, or what "CITY" they are talking about, and frankly I don't care.

Next, we find them packing their suitcases with vigor. I don't know about you, but when I pack for a trip, I usually don't throw my polka-dot pants in the air and expect them to magically find their way to my suitcase, but maybe that's just me.

In our next panel, an exclamation point haunts the head of the green cat with yellow ears and red ascot (just like Freddy from Scooby-Doo!) while the overstuffed suitcase glows with the glow of a thousand suns.

"LOOKS LIKE A JOB FOR PUPPY."

I totally agree.

As evidenced by the question marks hovering around her skull, the girly cat-like thing is confused to "HOW CAN PUPPY HELP?".

COMPITTY CLOMP KLOMP

What I assume to be the aforementioned "PUPPY", comes bolting along.

SKLONCH

The big, fat, blueish, greenish thing pounces on the suitcase, making it visibly fart.

"THANKS PUPPY!"

In the end, the Cattanooga Cats suitcase has been tightened shut, and all is well in all of kitty cat creation.

And so the gang is off on their 7 month tour of "THE CITY", leaving their puppyish thing to fend for himself.

How heartwarming.

CLICK on the photo(s) to enable the ENLARGE-O-MATIC PHOTO EMBIGGENER®!!

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Well, here we are at the end of the Darkwing Duck script collection. Lucky for you, though, we have barely even scratched the surface of my Darkwing Duck collection! Oh yes.

Today's script is for one of the best episodes of the entire series, "The Darkwing Squad". In this episode, J. Gander Hooter decides that Darkwing needs to train S.H.U.S.H.'s best (aka nerdiest) agents to be more like the daringly dashing Darkwing. Of course, Gryzlikoff hates this idea, but if we let him be the boss of this whole operation, then we wouldn't have this episode, which would lead to not having this script, which would lead to not having this blog entry!

*GASP*

Thank God Gryzlikoff isn't in charge.

For the rest of the episode, while Darkwing trains the bumbling agents, the evil supervillian Steelbeak takes advantage of Gryzlikoff's anger at the situation to recruit him to F.O.W.L. for his prolific plot against humanity! Of course, then it's The Darkwing Squad to the rescue!

For some reason, Sylvester and Tweety, who are both well-known domesticated house pets, are entwined in some sort of chase in the forest. THE FOREST. Yeesh... the factual inaccuracies in these comics are becoming more and more obvious.